Another “Honey Do” List of Repairs for the ISS
The silence of space and orbital darkness surrounded International Space Station spacewalkers, Peggy Whitson and Dan Tani, who have just finished installing a new joint motor at the base of one of the starboard solar arrays outside the station. They have already successfully removed its faulty predecessor prior to it, and just completed the finishing touches by driving a series of fasteners into the part, in order to make sure it is securely attached.
The reason the astronauts work during the eclipses or when the sun is blocked by the Earth is because they would have been shocked. This shocking would have occurred due to the high power levels surging through the arrays when the sun shone on the solar panels, as the astronauts worked on them. “We have to be very conscientious when we’re opening connections that will expose us to that power,” said Tani, adding that he and Whitson must also take special care since they will be working with latches that physically connect the solar wing to the ISS. “That is probably the biggest danger of this [spacewalk].”
The power-generating ability of the ISS was in jeopardy, which required the restoration of the orbiting laboratory’s expansive solar wings. Since early December of 2007, the injured solar wing has not been able to track the sun, as the joint mother had begun suffering a series of electrical shorts.
Without the repair, the ISS would not have had enough power to last through the February 7th launching coming up, according to Kirk Shireman, NASA’s ISS deputy program manager. But with the repair, the ISS has enough power to last through the planned launchings to establish the Japanese laboratory in April and into the summer of this year. Up until now, a lot has been hinging on NASA’s launching of their space shuttle Atlantis, which will be carrying the new European laboratory. If the launching had been able to take off in January, the repair would have been postponed on a temporary basis until after the shuttle returned to Earth, whereas ISS flight engineer and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko would have filled in for Tani and accompanied Whitson on the repair job.
Tani is trained in the field of solar array motor replacement, but is scheduled to return to Earth when the February 7th launching of the STS-122 returns back to Earth, leaving the French astronaut Leopold Eyharts of the European Space Station. So it is probably a good thing the repair was completed now, even though
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Space Agency News, Technical Concerns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
